Abstract: Peter Laudati, Brian Hitney and Andrew Duthie are back for part 2 of their series and in today’s episode Andrew shows us how to deploy the OData Service for his Windows 8 app to Windows Azure as well as outlines the advantages and disadvantages to building back-end services via this approach. After watching this video, follow these next steps: Step #1 – Try Windows Azure: No cost. No obligation. 90-Day FREE trial. Step #2 – Download the Tools for Windows 8 App Development Step #3... [More]

When developing locally, often times you don’t want to use SSL for a variety of reasons. There’s no real point, since the request isn’t going over the wire. Most of the time, connections are done via the loopback 127.0.0.1 address (although localhost can be used) which throws certificate errors. This one problem is often easy to solve, but it relates to a bigger issue: dictating when (and when not) to use SSL on your site. In the ol’ days, you wouldn’t want an entire site to be SSL... [More]

Recently, a colleague of mine, Adam Hoffman, posted a great tip on serializing a generic List<t> to a Windows 8 App’s RoamingSettings. As Adam points out, taking advantage of roaming storage is so easy to do, it’s criminal not to take advantage of it. There are three basic types of data: local, roaming, and temporary. The APIs are all used similarly, and more info on them can be found here.
There are a few things to keep in mind when using roaming data. ... [More]

Abstract: Peter Laudati and Brian Hitney welcome fellow Developer Evangelist, Andrew Duthie to the show as they kick off their series on how to build back-end services for their Windows 8 apps using Windows Azure. Tune in for part 1 as Andrew gives an overview of the series and introduces some potential techniques you could incorporate as you build your back-end services. After watching this video, follow these next steps: Step #1 – Try Windows Azure: No cost. No obligation. 90-Day FREE trial. ... [More]

A lot of apps require internet connectivity to function – like my app, Dark Skies. One thing I overlooked when first releasing Dark Skies was a graceful check for network connectivity. If the app launches and there is no connectivity, it should fail gracefully and notify the user. Ideally, we should also plug into the Network Status Changed event handler, so our app is notified when the internet goes up or down during the app’s session. There are a couple of ways to accomplish this.... [More]

At the Columbia Windows 8 DevCamp this weekend, the topic of side-loading apps came up in a few different scenarios, but it was particularly appropriate during the app showcase. We had a number of developers working in the lab room, all competing to come up with the coolest app at the end of the day. During the showcase where developers pitch their apps to the audience, it works best to have all the apps on the same machine. Here’s the best way to do it without having to copy source code/s... [More]

I’m happy to finally have the next update to Dark Skies in the Windows 8 store! In the initial release, I used Bing Maps to display light pollution data. In this version, I allow users to display and share favorite viewing spots, and spruced up the live tile with some cool info. The main page can display information about a pin on the map: Admittedly, there aren’t too many pins just yet, but it will grow over time. It’s not just favorite viewing locations – astronomy shops, user ... [More]

Never too late to post! Here’s an episode of DevRadio Peter and I did on TFS Projects in Azure! Abstract: Peter Laudati and Brian Hitney are back for today’s show as they show us how we can integrate TFS (Team Foundation Server) projects with Windows Azure Web Sites. They also discuss Windows Azure’s latest price reduction for Storage as well as tee up new features in Windows Azure Mobile Services. After watching this video, follow these next steps: Step #1 – Try Win... [More]

What’s this? Another Windows Azure Mobile Services (WAMS) post?! In the next version of my app, I keep a record of the user’s Channel in order to send down notifications. The built in todo list example does this or something very similar. My table in WAMS looks like: Not shown are a couple of fields, but of particular interest is the device Id. I realized that one user might have multiple devices, so the channel then is tied to the device Id. I still haven’t found a ... [More]